Vatican City, Mar 3, 2018 / 03:15 am (CNA/EWTN News).- When pilgrims in the Eternal City hope to get an up-close view of the pope, or even shake his hand, they are usually advised to arrive at the Vatican early, to sit next to the barrier and, most importantly, to find a baby.
Brian and Kelle Smith, whose youngest son Bobby recently made his debut on the Pope’s Instagram account, only needed the first two suggestions. They’d come prepared with the baby.
Like many pilgrims who visit Rome, on Wednesday morning they woke up early, gathered their six children and braved the rain and long security lines before making in into the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall for Pope Francis’ Feb. 28 general audience.
Almost as soon as he entered the hall, Francis saw the family and made a beeline to the kids, giving each of them a blessing and patting Bobby, 2, on the cheeks. The toddler, perched on the barrier, has his eyes fixed on the Pope’s pectoral cross.
Instead of continuing down the line, Francis paused when he saw Bobby pointing to his chest, and stepped closer, allowing the boy to trace his finger along the chain holding his pectoral cross.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”><a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/PopeFrancis?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#PopeFrancis</a> greets a young child at today’s audience who wants to get a better look at the Cross he wears. <a href=”https://t.co/vXH0u7UHqv”>pic.twitter.com/vXH0u7UHqv</a></p>— Mary Shovlain (@maryshovlain) <a href=”https://twitter.com/maryshovlain/status/968773182936289280?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>February 28, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Video footage of the encounter shows the Pope flashing a big smile and giving Bobby a final pat on the cheek before moving down the line of pilgrims.
Clips of the interaction immediately went up on Twitter, and later that day a close-up of the Bobby touching Francis’ cross went up on the Pope’s Instagram account, Franciscus.
In a March 2 interview with CNA, Brian Smith, the boy’s father, said it was a special moment for the family, “and Pope Francis was great, he was engaging with [Bobby].”
Smith said his son had been waving at the Pope as he walked in, “and he’s got the curly blonde hair, so I guess he caught Pope Francis’ eye.”
Francis, he said, “was very warm, and he spent a lot of time with the kids, really engaging with my youngest son.”
Though the interaction only lasted about 20 seconds, Smith was moved by the amount of time Pope Francis spent with them. “He’s the Pope, he’s the leader of our Church, of a billion Catholics, and he came and spent that amount of time with us when thousands of people were there to see him.”
During the brief encounter both the Pope and Bobby were talking with each other, Francis spoke in Italian and Bobby in baby-babble. However, with the noise and the excitement of the moment, Smith said he couldn’t make out what either was trying to say.
“It all seemed to happen so fast,” he said, noting that Francis “came and touched all six of the kids’ heads and gave them all a blessing, which was great.”
The family left Rome Thursday night and returned to Germany, where Smith is stationed with the U.S. military. They didn’t know about the Pope’s Instagram post until the next day, when a friend sent them a link to the post on Facebook.
“It was a pretty neat photo, the photographer did a great job capturing it,” he said. “It was pretty meaningful.”
<blockquote class=”instagram-media” data-instgrm-captioned data-instgrm-permalink=”https://www.instagram.com/p/Bfvu1NMDWx-/” data-instgrm-version=”8″ style=” background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% – 2px); width:calc(100% – 2px);”><div style=”padding:8px;”> <div style=” background:#F8F8F8; line-height:0; margin-top:40px; padding:50.0% 0; text-align:center; width:100%;”> <div style=” background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAABGdBTUEAALGPC/xhBQAAAAFzUkdCAK7OHOkAAAAMUExURczMzPf399fX1+bm5mzY9AMAAADiSURBVDjLvZXbEsMgCES5/P8/t9FuRVCRmU73JWlzosgSIIZURCjo/ad+EQJJB4Hv8BFt+IDpQoCx1wjOSBFhh2XssxEIYn3ulI/6MNReE07UIWJEv8UEOWDS88LY97kqyTliJKKtuYBbruAyVh5wOHiXmpi5we58Ek028czwyuQdLKPG1Bkb4NnM+VeAnfHqn1k4+GPT6uGQcvu2h2OVuIf/gWUFyy8OWEpdyZSa3aVCqpVoVvzZZ2VTnn2wU8qzVjDDetO90GSy9mVLqtgYSy231MxrY6I2gGqjrTY0L8fxCxfCBbhWrsYYAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; position:relative; top:-22px; width:44px;”></div></div> <p style=” margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;”> <a href=”https://www.instagram.com/p/Bfvu1NMDWx-/” style=” color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;” target=”_blank”>#GeneralAudience</a></p> <p style=” color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;”>A post shared by <a href=”https://www.instagram.com/franciscus/” style=” color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;” target=”_blank”> Pope Francis</a> (@franciscus) on <time style=” font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;” datetime=”2018-02-28T15:42:59+00:00″>Feb 28, 2018 at 7:42am PST</time></p></div></blockquote> <script async defer src=”//www.instagram.com/embed.js”></script>
After living in Germany for two years, the family is set to return to the United States in six months, and had wanted to visit Rome one last time before going back.
“We basically just went to Rome to see the Pope,” Smith said, explaining that they had initially planned to attend the general audience in January while visiting a friend in Italy, but had to cancel the Rome portion of the trip because the Pope was in South America.
However, it wasn’t their first time meeting the Vicar of Christ. Though it was their first interaction with Pope Francis, Brian, Kelle and their three oldest children met Benedict XVI during his Mass for Pentecost in 2010.
“One thing about both of them is that popes love babies,” he said, recalling that as soon as Benedict entered St. Peter’s Basilica “he saw the children and he just ignored everybody else and came for the kids and blessed them.”
“So my older three kids don’t have an excuse,” he joked, “because they’ve been blessed by two popes.”
Smith said that while he is excited to return to his home in Texas for a few years, he has enjoyed living in Europe, where, despite a general decline in the practice of the Christian faith, “there’s still so many great sites…Pretty much all of modern Europe is based on 1,000 years of the Church being here. So it’s great.”
Highlights of their time in Europe have included visits to Fatima, Orvieto and Lourdes, where Smith participated in the annual military pilgrimage to the shrine, as well as many other places where saints are buried.
However, Smith said perhaps the biggest highlight was having his son Bobby – who is named after Jesuit St. Robert Bellarmine – baptized by a Jesuit priest he knows during Mass celebrated at the saint’s tomb in Rome.
“This has been a great posting for us,” he said, “because you hear about things but America is not really a Catholic country, so it’s great to be able to see all of these pilgrimage places, it’s a great blessing.”
[…]
Of course (!), Fr. James Martin doesn’t reject the teachings of the Church. The game plan is to leave these teaching in place while, at the same time, creating a categorical safe-space where the teachings are simply suspended and do not apply. The separation of faith from objective morality.
One need not wonder whether the “clearinghouse” for now a category of persons includes Veritatis Splendor, or the Catechism, or even philosophical references to natural law. Instead, tunnel vision, literally.
Is this separation of faith and morality the modern equivalent to Arianism (the separation of Christ as the incarnation, from the divinity of the Father)? If so, the 1700th Anniversary (2025 A.D.) of the Council of Nicaea has its work cut out, and the synodal path of only walking together (through 2023 A.D.) doesn’t get us there.
No one, anywhere, denies the straw-man statement that “God is Father and he does not disown any of his children.” But, do we possibly abandon Him? Indeed, His complete “style” (what?) is merciful openness to personal conversion with particular forgiveness.
If half-truths ever work their way into the New Evangelization, this would be a betrayal of the entire Church.
Does God disown their behavior?
From the moment of conception, a unique human being is determined as biologically male or female. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I set you apart and appointed you…” (Jeremiah 1:5). God willed and commanded that men and women “Be fruitful and multiply.” To that end, God provided men and women with the necessary means to procreate or cooperate with His work.
Mutilation or chemical transmogrification of one’s personal, God-given, biologically determined sexual organs, fails to comply with both natural and divine law. A person engaged in sterile sexual relations cannot procreate. The LGBTQ person thus denies both himself and God the honorable meaning, use, and purpose of his life. Justice requires that men seek happiness in the way of salvation which God has set for them.
Jesus, at Matthew 7:21: Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father in heaven.
Aquinas, together with Gregory the Great preceding him, identified ‘daughters’ or consequences pursuant to the practice of the vice of lust. The ‘daughters’ include blindness of mind, thoughtlessness, inconstancy, self-love, hatred of God, love of this world (ST II-II Q. 153, A. 5) among others.
That church leaders have no qualms about not teaching the truth of God and His way of salvation is an abomination. May God have mercy.
“A ‘selective’ church, one of ‘pure blood,’ is not Holy Mother Church, but rather a sect.”
How true. The Parable of the Wedding Feast does highlight this fact. However, from scripture we do know that though we may be invited or called, not everyone is saved. Only those in union with Jesus doing the will of the Father will be saved. Living sinful lives is not the will of the Father.
As a gauge for discerning Francis’ words, we would, for example, expect His Holiness be delighted to support Germany’s New Way [neuer Anfgang]. Example, “The Holy Tradition and the Holy Scriptures form the one sacred treasure of the Word of God left to the Church’ (Dei Verbum 10). This statement is currently of great importance: In the orientation text of the Synodal Path in Germany, this clarification, which has been carried out continuously in the 2000-year history of the church, is ignored. Instead, new sources of revelation are mentioned, which are of importance for the theological discussion, but nothing more. To place them next to the recognized sources of knowledge or even to attach a higher importance to them is so theologically adventurous that this must be classified as revolutionary or – in church language – as heretical” (Martin Grünewald neuer Anfgang).
He doesn’t. He instead prefers convivial relations with SynodalWay Bishop Bätzing, and praise of Cardinal Reinhard Marx’ Queer Liturgy [Marx’ own description]. That is why what he says regarding Outreach to LGBT, “God does not disown any of his children” may seem compassionate, except that in this context, adding his approval of Fr James Martin’s efforts for liceity of same sex activity his words appear accommodating. If the SynodalWay succeeds in severing the German Church from the Vine, this difference in response will have contributed.
Of your quote: “‘The Holy Tradition and the Holy Scriptures form the one sacred treasure of the Word of God left to the Church’ (Dei Verbum 10).” And of other such truths…
Recall that the vademecum for synodality calls for very distilled synthesis reports while, at the same time, allowing for “minority reports.” Should we be surprised if rainbow/red-hatted Hollerich, the relator/super-synthesizer for the synodal Synod on Synodality (!!!) finds that those diocesan synods explicitly (!) affirming such as what you have quoted, are found to be minority reports in the paper-trail compendium of “continental” syntheses–such that the Tradition and orthodox Catholicism (in both faith and morals) are surely still included—but weighted as a “minority report”?
Count the words…word games. Should we be surprised? Should we? Instead of being severed from the vine, the viral German sect will claim to be the main stem of a non-exclusive jungle.
Theological Wuhan!
It is Good News. The Creator is known for generosity and magnanimity.